In the development of logistics systems there is a trend towards an ever greater degree of automation in order to save costs and time and increase the profitability of the systems. It is therefore known to use automated, computer-controlled rack-mounted machines for storage into, and retrieval from, a high-rise installation, for example. In said case, an operation that is crucial to the efficiency of the overall system is the picking operation, i.e. collation of the goods for a delivery order, e.g. collation of a parts delivery from a supplier to a car manufacturer or of order pallets containing goods for the branches of a supermarket chain.
In prior art the picking operation even in, as a whole, highly automated storage systems is essentially still carried out manually by a picker, who either stands in an—electronically guided—rack-mounted storage/retrieval machine and removes the goods from the high-rise installation or “picks” the goods from a picking area of a fixed width (e.g. 8 to 14 m) or transfers the goods from a storage container to an order container. The manual work is costly, limits the profitability of the system as a whole and—especially in the case of heavy articles—entails health risks for the picker.